Maria Carter

Kansas City is painting the town red ahead of Sunday's big game.

The Chiefs host the Tennessee Titans at 2:05 p.m. Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium in the AFC Championship Game with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line. It's the second straight year Kansas City has advanced this far in the playoffs, and with football fever in the air once again, metro motorists are seeing red everywhere.

On November 5, voters in Kansas City, Missouri, chose to reverse the city council's decision to rename Paseo Boulevard after Martin Luther King, Jr. and filled two open seats in the Missouri House with Democrats. In Kansas, Wyandotte County voters largely re-elected incumbents with one notable exception.

A Jackson County sheriff’s deputy has been charged after shooting a woman in the back while trying to arrest her in August. 

Jackson County prosecutors on Wednesdsay charged Lauren Michael, 29, with first-degree assault and armed criminal action.

According to the charging documents, the shooting occurred after deputies tried to pull over a couple driving a Byrd scooter the wrong way down a street. The man was arrested but the woman fled.

As lesbian, Native American Sharice Davids unseated a four-term Kansas Congressman and state Sen. Laura Kelly chalked up a decisive win over Kris Kobach in the Kansas governor's race, one feminist hero watched the state's election results from afar. 

Syed Jamal, a Lawrence, Kansas, scientist arrested in January for overstaying his visa, will be able to present his case to an immigration judge, preventing his imminent deportation.

Henry County 911 Emergency Communications said in a statement late Friday afternoon that a database error may have led to Clinton, Missouri, police officers being sent to the wrong address, where one officer died.

Officer Christopher Ryan Morton was shot and killed while responding to a 911 call Tuesday evening at an address on Grandriver Street in Clinton. Two other officers were wounded by James E. Waters, who was later found dead in the house. The cause of his death is still being investigated.

Kansas City did not make the short list to be home to Amazon’s second headquarters.

The $5 billion project, known as HQ2, will bring 50,000 high paying jobs to the chosen city.  

“Thank you to all 238 communities that submitted proposals. Getting from 238 to 20 was very tough — all the proposals showed tremendous enthusiasm and creativity,” said Holly Sullivan, Amazon Public Policy.

The U.S. Department of Commerce is awarding $1.6 million to the Hispanic Economic Development Corporation of Greater Kansas City, or HEDC.

The grant, announced on Thursday, will be used to renovate an industrial building near 27th and Southwest Boulevard, at 2720 Jarboe, and turn it into a small business incubator. 

Pedro Zamora, the non-profit’s executive director, says minorities are sometimes left out of Kansas City's entrepreneurship community. 

Kansas City is launching an effort to be the home to Amazon’s second corporate headquarters.

Amazon plans to plow more $5 billion into building another headquarters that will be an equal to the current one in Seattle. The internet retailer plans to employ some 50,000 people with average salaries topping $100,000 at what it is calling “HQ2.”

The Cerner Corporation announced Sunday that CEO and co-founder Neal Patterson has died. He was 67.

In a statement, Cerner said Patterson died from “unexpected complications that arose after a recent recurrence of a previously disclosed cancer.”

Cerner vice chairman and co-founder Cliff Illig will take over as interim CEO.

“This is a profound loss. Neal and I have been partners and collaborators for nearly 40 years, and friends for longer than that,” Illig said.

The company, headquartered in North Kansas City, employs 25,000 people worldwide.

Two Kansas lawmakers say they are okay after reports of a shooting at a Congressional baseball practice outside Washington, D.C., Wednesday morning. 

NPR reports Rep. Steve Scalise, Republican from Louisiana, one of his aides, and two Capitol Police were injured in the shooting. 

One employee was killed and four more were injured by an explosion at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Missouri.

The Joint Munitions Command says the explosion occurred at approximately 1 p.m. Tuesday in a primer mixing cell. The injured workers were evaluated on scene and refused further treatment.

People across the south Kansas City area felt a blast Tuesday evening after an explosion at a lawn care business in Grandview.

Firefighters were called to JW Lawn Service near 140th and I-49 after receiving calls about an explosion and fire shortly after 7 p.m. 

Firefighters took a defensive position, waiting to go into the burning building because of reports of ammunition inside. They reported at least a dozen more explosions while on the scene.

A busy day for Kansas City councilmembers ended months of debate by cutting back the city’s economic development incentives while awarding money to two hotel projects.

Just two weeks ago, the council had deadlocked on the incentives measure and decided to delay a vote. On Thursday, the tide had shifted. The council voted 9-4 to approve the plan.

The ordinance caps tax incentives at 75 percent of a projects cost in most case. The exceptions include distressed areas and projects that do well on the AdvanceKC scorecard, providing things like high-paying jobs.

At Frank Rushton Elementary, students aren’t just getting new boxes of pencils and crayons. They’re getting a whole new school.

"Compared to the other building, it’s really nice,” says parent Ayesha Marks. “I like the library upgrade with the computer and books and everything.”

“It’s awesome,” says third-grader Gianni Ramos of the school. “It’s much bigger and has more space.”

A lot more space. The old building, near the intersection of 43rd and Rainbow Ave., was jam-packed.

Hila “Dutch” Bucher Newman, a leading figure in Missouri Democratic politics for decades, has died. She was 95.

The morning after Hillary Clinton officially became the first woman to head a major party ticket, the news of Newman’s death was announced to the Missouri delegation at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday.

Newman would have reveled in Clinton's moment. She wrote in a Facebook post in 2014, "I am so excited for a Presidential run by Hillary Clinton, I can hardly stand it!"

Hundreds of people gathered Tuesday night at a candlelight vigil outside the Kansas City, Kansas City Hall to remember police detective Brad Lancaster, who was shot and killed as he pursued a suspect near the Kansas Speedway on Monday.

Mayor Pro Tem Hal Walker says he first met Lancaster just after he graduated from the police academy. “It was clear then as it was clear throughout his career what great potential, what great service he gave to his community,” says Walker.

More than a week after the election, the Kansas City Public Schools board is complete.

The Kansas City Election board announced Wednesday that John Fierro, Natalie Lewis and Ajia Morris won seats on the board. All three were write-in candidates and so were their only challengers, which delayed the results.

Lewis spent two decades working in the private sector before she became a teacher. She beat architect Albert Ray for the sub-district 1 seat.

Fierro is the president of the Mattie Rhodes Center. He won the in sub-district 3 against Marisol Montero.

Kansas City Power and Light has agreed to buy wind energy from two plants now under construction in northwest Missouri.

NextEra Energy Resources is building its Osborn wind farm east of St. Joseph. It’s expected to be up and running by the end of the year and provide 200 megawatts of energy. A little further north, Tradewind Energy plans to complete the 300 megawatt Rock Creak wind farm near Tarkio, Missouri by September 2017.

A hard freeze is bad for most flowers, but a patch of prairie in midtown Kansas City has seen so-called “frost flowers” in full bloom this winter.

Frost flowers aren’t really flowers at all. They are ribbons of ice twirling out from the stalks of some plants including the white crownbeard, a wildflower flower native to Missouri and Kansas.

Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza will soon have a new owner.

Country Club KC Partners LLC is buying the Plaza for $660 million, Highwoods Properties announced Monday. The deal is expected to be finalized in the first quarter.

Country Club KC Partners is an equal partnership between Taubman Centers and the Macerich Company, which are based in Michigan and California, respectively. Both companies own and manage dozens of malls and shopping centers.

Kansas City police are investigating an apparent suicide of a firefighter outside a fire station at 34th and Paseo.

There’s no doubt about it.

Tons of people went to the Royals World Series victory parade and rally. The city is estimating 800,000 people.

Kansas City soon could be home to something called microtransit.

The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority is negotiating with Bridj, which offers a popup bus service.

Bridj is the bus version of Uber or Lyft. Customers sign up and can use an app to book a bus ride and be picked up within a five-minute walk. Unlike Uber or Lyft, you’re riding a small bus with 10 or so other people.

KCATA CEO Joe Reardon says it another way to connect people to jobs.

On a sunny day, two workers had a big job ahead of them — removing the 7-foot bars that for years covered the front windows of El Paso del Norte, a bakery and taqueria on Independence Avenue in northeast Kansas City.

Mike Iniguez and his brothers run the restaurant. He says the neighborhood was “kind of sad” when his father opened the business in 1998.

It was a working class area, and many of the homes and businesses there were rundown. But low home prices drew Latinos and other immigrants to the historic neighborhood.